What is the smallest a kitchen can be?

A single wall of 2400 mm holds a 600 fridge, a 800 sink, a 450 dishwasher and a 600 hob with nothing left over, and the room needs 900 mm of floor in front of it, so about 2400 × 1500 mm. Most small kitchens are 2000–2400 mm wide and 2500–3500 mm long, which is galley or single-wall territory.

Can I fit an island in a small kitchen?

Not in a room under about 3500 mm deep: the island and its two aisles need that much on their own. A peninsula on the end of a run gives the same worktop with one aisle, and a 600 × 1200 table on legs can be moved when it is in the way. The island clearance guide has the sums.

Should I skip the dishwasher to save space?

A 450 mm slimline dishwasher takes less run than the drying rack it replaces, and it goes where a base cabinet would. Keep it next to the sink so it shares the waste. Skip the second bowl of the sink instead.

The starter layouts are bigger than my room. What do I do?

Enter your room size first, in the Room tab. Units that no longer fit are flagged in the layout checks, and you delete or shrink them from the list. Starting from the single-wall or galley starter means fewer to remove. The checks re-run on every change, so you find out immediately when an aisle gets too narrow.

Small Kitchen Layouts With Dimensions: Which Shape Fits

Which layout fits, by room width

Measure the room wall face to wall face across its narrower dimension and read down. The figures assume 600 mm deep base cabinets and the aisle widths from the dimensions guide.

Kitchen layout by room width
Room width (wall to wall)	Layout that fits	Why
Under 2100	Single wall	One 600 run and a 900 walkway; a second run leaves no aisle
2200–2400	Galley	Two 600 runs and a 1000–1200 aisle
2400 × 2400 and up	L-shape	Two legs of 2400 with a corner unit; the open side takes a table
2800 × 2800 and up	U-shape	Three runs with 1000 between the facing pair
3500 deep, 3000 wide and up	L with an island	600 run + 1000 aisle + 900 island + 1000 aisle

Widths are minimums, wall face to wall face, with 600 mm deep cabinets. A window low on a wall, a radiator or a door in the corner takes that wall out of play.

Unit sizes that buy back space

Every catalogue unit in the planner has an editable width, depth and height, so a small kitchen is mostly a matter of typing smaller numbers where a smaller appliance exists.

Smaller units and what they save
Instead of	Use	What you get back
600 mm dishwasher	450 mm slimline	150 mm of run
900 mm hob	600 mm hob	300 mm, and landing space either side
700 mm fridge	550–600 mm fridge	100–150 mm; check the model's door swing
Wall cabinets 720 mm tall	Cabinets to the ceiling	A third more storage on the same wall
Oven under the hob	Oven and microwave in one tall unit	A whole base cabinet, and a hob with drawers under it
Hinged room door	Sliding or pocket door	The 900 mm swing zone, which is a cabinet's worth of floor
A blind corner	A straight run plus a tall unit	The dead corner, in a room too small to reach into it

A single-wall example, 3000 mm

One run along a 3000 mm wall, in a room 2000 mm wide. Everything is a standard module, the sink and hob have landing space between them, the fridge door opens away from the run, and the 1400 mm of floor in front of the run is more than the 900 mm walkway minimum.

A 3000 mm single-wall kitchen
Position	Unit	Width
0	Refrigerator, 600 wide	600
600	Sink cabinet	900
1500	Dishwasher, slimline	450
1950	Hob cabinet with hood above	600
2550	Drawer unit	450
3000	End of wall	—

Wall cabinets to the ceiling above the sink and drawers; the hood above the hob. A tall unit is not used because it would take the fridge's place.

Dimensioned floor plan of the planner's single-wall starter kitchen: filler, dishwasher, sink cabinet, 900 mm drawer unit, hob with hood, oven housing and refrigerator along one 4600 mm wall, with a door on the opposite wall — The planner's single-wall starter, at 4600 mm, exported from the editor. Shrink the room to 3000 mm and remove the oven housing and one drawer unit to reach the example above.

A galley example, 2400 mm

A 2400 × 3000 mm room takes two runs with a 1200 mm aisle: sink, dishwasher, drawers and hob on one side; fridge, tall larder, drawers and a cabinet on the other, with the last 500 mm left for the door. The galley page lists it unit by unit and works out the triangle.

The three mistakes small kitchens make

Borrowing from the aisle. Every cabinet added to a galley comes out of the walkway. Below 1000 mm two people cannot pass and facing doors collide; the planner warns you at exactly that point.
Losing the landing space. A hob hard against a wall or a fridge, or a sink with a cabinet end on both sides, has nowhere to put a pan down. Keep 300 mm beside the hob as a minimum and 450 mm beside the sink before you keep anything else.
Filling the corner. In a room under 2400 mm square a blind corner unit costs more reach than it gives storage. Run one wall straight and put a tall unit at the end instead.

Starting small in the planner

The starter layouts are drawn at 4600 mm walls so that every unit fits before you shrink them. For a small room, start from the single-wall or galley starter, enter your own room size in the Room tab first, then delete the units the checks flag as outside the room. It is faster than building up from nothing, and the plan you export is dimensioned from the first minute.

Questions

How this page was made

The width table adds standard cabinet depths to the NKBA walkway and aisle guidelines, converted from inches. The worked examples are arrangements of standard module widths checked against the planner's rules; they have not been built. The floor plan is an unedited export of the planner's single-wall starter on 18 September 2026.

Sources

NKBA Kitchen Planning Guidelines · walkway and landing minimums
Kitchen layout dimensions and clearances
Kitchen island clearance · why an island needs 3500 mm

Written by the person who builds the planner, who is not a kitchen designer or an electrician: the guides say where a professional or a local code decides. Found a mistake? Write to us and it will be corrected with a note on this page.

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